MuCap Experiment
Submitted by gholman on Thu, 04/21/2011 - 12:30
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The goal of the µCap experiment (Kammel co-spokesperson) is a 1% precision measurement of the muon capture rate on the proton. From the capture rate the pseudoscalar form factor gP of the nucleon will be extracted with 7% precision. This basic quantity is predicted theoretically with high precision, but the experimental situation is quite controversial. The experiment is based on a new method using a time-projection-chamber filled with untrapure pressurized hydrogen gas. This eliminates many uncertainies, which plagued earlier experiment and should yield an unambiguous value for gP and a sensitive test of the chiral symmetry of QCD at low energies.